Do we really need more resource grinds?

[Ham_Grenabe]

DE is always going to add new resources to grind - they don't have a sufficient resource sink for long-time players, so there will always be something else. Nature of the game.

[Steel_Rook]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

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.

Despite having proposed it, my concern with a system like this is that it has substantial overhead. Essentially, you have to launch content twice, with different acquisition methods each time. Warframe HAS done this for some items, according to the Wiki. I've seen quite a few articles to the tune of "This item was rewarded from Event X. It was then rewarded from event Y. It's now available from Z rotation of UVW mission type." If DE were confident that they could actually do this, then I would absolutely LOVE for all new content to launch as part of some kind of limited-time event ala Buried Debts, and then be transitioned over to a permanent unlock through the eventual introduction of a permanent game mode or even retrofitting into legacy systems. I don't like Event Rewards remaining event-specific long-term, though, because a lot of the content ends up being Seasonal that way. For instance, I'd like to move the Exploiter Orb away from Operation: Buried Debts and make it available without costing Diluted Thermia. You can still HAVE Operation: Buried Debts for the rest of the rewards. Just as an example.

Nightwave could have been this, incidentally. It's an event store with a single currency which periodically resets as new content is released. The problem is that Nightwave isn't actually tied to new activities, most of its inventory is comprised of old stuff that people got used to having and all of the new rewards weren't in the store inventory but attached to a for-no-reason Battle Pass progression system on top of it. In a parallel universe, though, I could see Nightwave as the source for most new rewards, sitting there for a few weeks before they're migrated to new content for everyone who didn't participate, which Nightwave Store rolls over to the next batch of new rewards. That's not the Nightwave we got, however.

 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

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.

I don't know that that's fundamentally different from the current system, though. By retaining planet-specific and enemy-specific resources, you're retaining the content bottleneck issue. Granted, your proposal has it to a substantially lesser degree simply from having fewer resources and so broader availability, but I'm still going to have to run Earth and Mars missions in order to make Energy Restore consumables. I don't use Energy Restores, incidentally, but they're a decent example. Ideally, I'd like for all of the resources to drop from all of the things, such that I can play the planets and game modes I like and still amass inventory. That way, being asked to pay inventory for common-use consumables (even potentially ammo!) wouldn't feel like it's hurting me so much as it's mopping up my spare resources to keep them from spiralling out of control.

Actually, let's use a better example - the Health Restore only craftable from bullS#&$ plants found on Earth both at night and during the day. Rather than limiting me to only crafting that thing from those planetary resources, gate it to some high-level planet or node and then just let me keep building it over and over again using resources I already have or can get from practically everywhere. Because right now, Health Restores simply aren't worth using not by virtue of their value or by virtue of their cost, but rather by virtue of how tedious their abundantly available resources are to actually collect, and from what's easily my least favourite tileset at that.

I'd certainly welcome a loosening of the content bottlenecks, but I'm kind of hoping for fundamentally more open system. Ideally, I'd like to pick content at least predominantly because I actually like playing it, rather than because that's where I have to go to get 10 bear asses, so to speak. I certainly want to avoid a repeat of Cetus and Fortuna, with their fully insular economy and propensity for new content to be jammed there regardless of whether it fits or not. But at the same time, that's not easy to do...

[Teridax68]

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Despite having proposed it, my concern with a system like this is that it has substantial overhead. Essentially, you have to launch content twice, with different acquisition methods each time.

I think the overhead is overstated. Crafting recipes are not difficult to implement, nor would a Riven Mod or Sortie-style challenge, even a tailor-made one. If the event is recurring, e.g. Thermia fractures or Plague Star, there need not even be more than one method of acquisition.

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't know that that's fundamentally different from the current system, though. By retaining planet-specific and enemy-specific resources, you're retaining the content bottleneck issue. Granted, your proposal has it to a substantially lesser degree simply from having fewer resources and so broader availability, but I'm still going to have to run Earth and Mars missions in order to make Energy Restore consumables.

... but that is simply because Energy Restores have a crafting recipe that currently only depends off of a handful of repetitive missions. By contrast, if the recipe were to demand resources from four separate planets, you'd have a much broader range of content to run. The fact that each resource would have an extremely specific origin means you'd be able to control your recipes in such a way that you could push players to play a much more diverse range of content beyond simply one mission on one planet.

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I don't use Energy Restores, incidentally, but they're a decent example. Ideally, I'd like for all of the resources to drop from all of the things, such that I can play the planets and game modes I like and still amass inventory. That way, being asked to pay inventory for common-use consumables (even potentially ammo!) wouldn't feel like it's hurting me so much as it's mopping up my spare resources to keep them from spiralling out of control.

Which effectively means you might as well drop the resource requirement entirely, because the costs wouldn't be pushing you to play anything. Moreover, if "all of the resources" drop from "all of the things", farming those resources simply degenerates into finding the most efficient node to farm them all, thereby engendering further repetition and content isolation. Such a system enables no fine control over where to push players to find resources, so you might as well boil everything down to one resource, or just credits.

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Actually, let's use a better example - the Health Restore only craftable from bullS#&$ plants found on Earth both at night and during the day. Rather than limiting me to only crafting that thing from those planetary resources, gate it to some high-level planet or node and then just let me keep building it over and over again using resources I already have or can get from practically everywhere. Because right now, Health Restores simply aren't worth using not by virtue of their value or by virtue of their cost, but rather by virtue of how tedious their abundantly available resources are to actually collect, and from what's easily my least favourite tileset at that.

But then the problem is simply that the process of getting those resources isn't fun, not that specific resources are bad. The solution here should be to have whichever ingredient drop from Earth without having to scan plants, or for the ingredient to come from some genuine bit of gameplay, i.e. its own game mode across planets, so that you could avoid going on Earth if you really don't want to. On top of that, eliminating the time-gating component via day/night cycle, reducing the individual requirements, and diversifying the resources so that they don't all come from the same source would all contribute to much less frustrating and repetitive resource farming. Asking to just have the item you want handed to you because of resources you incidentally happened to collect while doing something else basically amounts to wanting to have the thing without spending any actual time or effort on it specifically.

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'd certainly welcome a loosening of the content bottlenecks, but I'm kind of hoping for fundamentally more open system. Ideally, I'd like to pick content at least predominantly because I actually like playing it, rather than because that's where I have to go to get 10 bear asses, so to speak. I certainly want to avoid a repeat of Cetus and Fortuna, with their fully insular economy and propensity for new content to be jammed there regardless of whether it fits or not. But at the same time, that's not easy to do...

Intrinsic incentives and a resource-based rewards system are fundamentally incompatible, imo, because resources boil down to "10 bear asses" no matter which way you slice them. I very much agree with you that we should be pushed to play content because it's intrinsically fun, not just for the sake of extrinsic rewards, which is why I advocated to remove resources entirely. In the meantime, though, if we're still to run on extrinsic rewards systems, we might as well clean them up so that one can have full control over what they signify and make the player do, which in turn would allow for a more open system if used well (i.e. to push players to engage in a variety of content, rather than tunnel-vision on the same isolated piece of content until they get sick of it a la PoE and Vallis).

[Steel_Rook]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Which effectively means you might as well drop the resource requirement entirely, because the costs wouldn't be pushing you to play anything. Moreover, if "all of the resources" drop from "all of the things", farming those resources simply degenerates into finding the most efficient node to farm them all, thereby engendering further repetition and content isolation. Such a system enables no fine control over where to push players to find resources, so you might as well boil everything down to one resource, or just credits. 

To be perfectly honest, that's sort of my wish overall. I want to pick my activities based on what I feel like playing, rather than what the game wants me to play. That desire is fundamentally incompatible with the way new content is released, especially in an MMO. Developers are always going to want me to play whatever they just released, both to "save me from myself" and so I could add another warm body to the matchmaking queue what I never use. I also get that some players would simply flock to whatever is the most efficient farming spot unless prevented from doing so and forced to experience a larger portion of the game. Some amount of herding, gating and bottlenecking is required, but I'd personally always push for it to be as non-specific as possible.

What about Blueprints with variable components? We already have a system for this in the game as it is. When the blueprint for one weapon requires another weapon, the player is prompted to pick which specific weapon to dismantle. How would you feel about recipes which could use a variety of resource types, with "non-standard" ones incurring a higher cost? Completely pulling numbers out of my ass here, but: Suppose a theoretical consumable cost 1000 Polymer Bundles. When building, the player would have the option to just use that, or else pay 1500 Ferrite, 1500 Rubedo or 2 Tellurium, instead. That way, a player could potentially still play the content they enjoy, safe in the knowledge that they can still craft what they need just at a higher cost. Might that be a decent compromise?

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Asking to just have the item you want handed to you because of resources you incidentally happened to collect while doing something else basically amounts to wanting to have the thing without spending any actual time or effort on it specifically.

I don't know that I agree. Specifically, I don't know that I agree with the merit of targeting an item "specifically." Let me offer a bit of context. I recently earned both Harrow and Ivara "the hard way," i.e. without buying them. I've tried to grind for both of them in the past and quickly lost interest because the constraint made the game feel really tedious. Instead, I resolved to just play what I enjoyed (I happen to enjoy both Spy and Defection missions) and just hope to get the drops whenever that happens. Despite what I said above, this is to me is the ideal progression system - one where I can pursue a fun experience and pick up rewards along the way. I'm fine with there being an option to get them faster if I so chose, but I don't like for there to be only a single option to get them, period.

And it's not like what I'm asking for is entirely unprecedented. Void Relics are a pretty good example of a reward system done mostly right, in my opinion. No, not all of them drop from all things, but each mission type is capable of dropping quite a few different ones, and they vary with mission level. Let's say I want a particular Prime item. That item's pieces tend to drop from a variety of Relics, each of those relics can be earned from a variety of mission types and planets, and all relics can be opened pretty much anywhere across the solar system. There ARE limitations, but there's enough breadth in there to ensure that "it doesn't feel like it." Granted, that may be what you're proposing and I'm just not seeing it, but that's the sort of system I tend to prefer.

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

In the meantime, though, if we're still to run on extrinsic rewards systems, we might as well clean them up so that one can have full control over what they signify and make the player do, which in turn would allow for a more open system if used well (i.e. to push players to engage in a variety of content, rather than tunnel-vision on the same isolated piece of content until they get sick of it a la PoE and Vallis).

No disagreement there. I'm still not sure if there are any easy solution, but I'd argue the problem itself is readily evident. Spending I don't know how many months adding stuff ONLY to Fortuna's progression system was absolutely demoralising for me, especially because I don't actually like Fortuna in the first place. I don't like the Free Roam maps in general, yet I had to put in a substantial amount of grind to get the few things out of there which I did want - mostly my Atmospheric Archgun, the Opticor Vandal and Hyldrin.

The Jovian Concord really was a breath of fresh air because not only did it push us into a brand new setting that wasn't Orb Vallis, it came with a lot of generic Star Map content that then fed into general rotation. Cetus and Fortuna are so insular as to be depressing. Not only were we forced to engage with this content if we wanted any of the new stuff, anything we gained from those places solely affected their own progression. With the Jupiter Remastered, I can engage in Jupiter content while working on Void Relics and Fissures, Star Chart resources, a few Warframes and "general purpose rewards."

After Cetus and Fortuna, this is such a nice breath of fresh air that I don't really mind so much how I have to grind Disruption for Hexenon and the Ropalolyst for Wisp. Yeah, that's true but there's so much else in the update that it's OK for the time being. I sincerely hope this is the blueprint moving forward.

[Els236]

Le 01/06/2019 à 16:56, LSG501 a dit :

@LSG501

 

Except, as stated by many others, this time-gating mechanism simply doesn't work for veterans who have everything else already and can farm at max efficiency.

People like Tactical Potato putting out videos on "how to get 1000 hexanon in an hour" doesn't really help either as most vets can just copy-paste what he did in his video and spend 2 hours farming 2k hexenon and never ever need to farm it again.

A 2 hour time-gate on 6 new items in this update? woww..... 

Secondly, Hexenon still has a higher drop-rate than Oxium, which also used to be easy af to farm during the first 10 waves of old IO, Jupiter.

 

Everything else in your statement, I completely agree with.

 

Il y a 10 heures, Teridax68 a dit :

@Teridax68

Completely agree with everything you've said.

 Resources as a time-gate might work for newbies, who can't farm as efficiently as possible, or who can't stay in survival/defection for hours at a time, but it doesn't work for veterans, which, like I said above, can farm at max efficiency and essentially nullify the time-gate within a few hours of the update dropping.

As it currently stands, there are just too many resources in Warframe and I can seriously see newbies getting confused at the sheer mass of stuff they need to farm.

"Oh well I need Neural Sensors for this helmet, but I need hexenon for this chassis, but I need orokin cells for this, but I need ferrite for that, wtf am I doing?"

 

 

Il y a 9 heures, ShortCat a dit :

@ShortCat

Originally, when it was released as a resource, people were up-in-arms over Argon Crystals having a "half-life" and decaying over time.

Nowadays I think a lot more people believe that more resources need this type of drawback, mainly for the reasons mentioned in this thread.

I do quite like your idea of changing resource acquisition, but then it raises the issue of: how would a newbie farm 50k alloy plate for a weapon in a decent amount of time when there aren't usually a huge amount of lockers in a level. Also, this would essentially make survival and endless missions pointless as most people only play them for resource or affinity farming. No one needs to do 20 waves of defense to end up with 150 endo and a vitality mod.

 

Il y a 6 heures, Steel_Rook a dit :

@Steel_Rook

 

Maybe have only 20 different crafting resources on the star chart, then blueprints to craft all the different stuff, like is currently the case with Fortuna and PoE... idk, I don't really have any ideas.

Delete 50% of the resources we have and triple the costs of blueprints? but then, again, this would screw over newbies.

I would like to maybe see new weapons and frames offered pre-built from Nightwave though. 300 Nitain credits for a new weapon or frame would be cool, as long as the credits don't expire after each episode ends.

edit: I keep calling them Nitain credits because that's essentially all they were used for in season 1.

 

Il y a 6 heures, (PS4)FriendSharkey a dit :

@(PS4)FriendSharkey

Something like the Thanos snap needs to happen at some point.

 

 

 

[(XBOX)Skippy575]

19 minutes ago, Els236 said:

Except, as stated by many others, this time-gating mechanism simply doesn't work for veterans who have everything else already and can farm at max efficiency.

Who said the time-gating was for vets?

[LSG501]

59 minutes ago, Els236 said:

snip

Except realistically vets aren't the target with these timegates... it's the 'new players' with cash to burn for instant gratification.   As you said vets can farm it all pretty easily (although I still feel hex is too low a drop rate, especially with the farming squad nerf) if we want to, new players can't and they're the ones who hit are hit by the timegate(s). 

They get impatient, they buy plat for boosters or the frame outright, DE's job is done for this release.  Rinse repeat with each new frame release. 

Edited June 3, 2019 by LSG501

[Els236]

il y a 14 minutes, LSG501 a dit :

Except realistically vets aren't the target with these timegates... it's the 'new players' with cash to burn for instant gratification.   As you said vets can farm it all pretty easily (although I still feel hex is too low a drop rate) if we want to, new players can't and they're the ones who hit are hit by the timegate(s). 

They get impatient, they buy plat for boosters or the frame outright, DE's job is done for this release.  Rinse repeat with each new frame release. 

Yeah I know...

Also, for Hexenon, I feel as though before they fixed the drop rate for Neurals, it dropped twice as much as it does now. Basically it seems like they nerfed both Neurals and Hexe. at the same time.

[LSG501]

Just now, Els236 said:

Yeah I know...

Also, for Hexenon, I feel as though before they fixed the drop rate for Neurals, it dropped twice as much as it does now. Basically it seems like they nerfed both Neurals and Hexe. at the same time. 

The vets were probably farming hex too fast lol

[ShortCat]

1 hour ago, Els236 said:

No one needs to do 20 waves of defense to end up with 150 endo and a vitality mod.

Well, my suggestion would indeed create new farming habbits and one exterminate run would yield more resources than defense. However, if nothing else would change, defense missions still have higher enemy density for fun killing time and remain good EXP farmspots. Furthermore, those huge stockpiles emerge precisely because we collect so much resources just by killing some dudes.

I can draw some parallels to PoE or Fortuna economy, namely ore and fish acquisition. You get only small amounts, if you do not dedicated runs. I can imagine, people collected only as much as they needed for a certain item and only a small percetage hoarded fish and ore for future updates. Well, it worked until Orbs and Thumpers did not exist.
I also can imagine, that substantial part of the playerbase despise mining/fishing, but openning some lockers or smashing containers should be less tedious.

[Els236]

Il y a 1 heure, ShortCat a dit :

Well, my suggestion would indeed create new farming habbits and one exterminate run would yield more resources than defense. However, if nothing else would change, defense missions still have higher enemy density for fun killing time and remain good EXP farmspots. Furthermore, those huge stockpiles emerge precisely because we collect so much resources just by killing some dudes.

I can draw some parallels to PoE or Fortuna economy, namely ore and fish acquisition. You get only small amounts, if you do not dedicated runs. I can imagine, people collected only as much as they needed for a certain item and only a small percetage hoarded fish and ore for future updates. Well, it worked until Orbs and Thumpers did not exist.
I also can imagine, that substantial part of the playerbase despise mining/fishing, but openning some lockers or smashing containers should be less tedious.

 

Well, the issue is that if resources only dropped from lockers, no one would run any defense or survival; they might run Hydron for affinity, otherwise everyone would just go spam S.O / E.S.O. even more.

The main nodes that are even used on the starmap are defense/survival, so yes, if resources dropped as you suggest, people would then swap over to running quick things like capture and exterminate, but then that is talking about a different issue entirely.

 

As for PoE and Fortuna, I only ever do dedicated runs as I will use my "Loot-Ki Prime" or my new Ivara, specifically to avoid getting gunned down by mobs that always know where I am, same for fishing on Fortuna.

I will only fish on PoE at night to avoid grineers and 20 minutes fishing Glappids with or without a booster is enough to max out standing for a few days, if not a week.

I also quite like fishing now and again, same for mining. I think I find that less tedious than spending 20 minutes in a capture mission looking for and opening every single locker.

[Teridax68]

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

What about Blueprints with variable components? We already have a system for this in the game as it is. When the blueprint for one weapon requires another weapon, the player is prompted to pick which specific weapon to dismantle. How would you feel about recipes which could use a variety of resource types, with "non-standard" ones incurring a higher cost? Completely pulling numbers out of my ass here, but: Suppose a theoretical consumable cost 1000 Polymer Bundles. When building, the player would have the option to just use that, or else pay 1500 Ferrite, 1500 Rubedo or 2 Tellurium, instead. That way, a player could potentially still play the content they enjoy, safe in the knowledge that they can still craft what they need just at a higher cost. Might that be a decent compromise?

I mean, you could technically have some sort of Horadric Cube-like object, perhaps even the foundry, that could let you transmute any resource into another with a degree of inefficiency, but then that ultimately just leads to the same thing, with resources blending into each other, and thus the concept of diverse resources falling apart. If your goal is to get you want by doing only what you like, diverse resources are not a system that will work towards that.

Quote

I don't know that I agree. Specifically, I don't know that I agree with the merit of targeting an item "specifically." Let me offer a bit of context. I recently earned both Harrow and Ivara "the hard way," i.e. without buying them. I've tried to grind for both of them in the past and quickly lost interest because the constraint made the game feel really tedious. Instead, I resolved to just play what I enjoyed (I happen to enjoy both Spy and Defection missions) and just hope to get the drops whenever that happens. Despite what I said above, this is to me is the ideal progression system - one where I can pursue a fun experience and pick up rewards along the way. I'm fine with there being an option to get them faster if I so chose, but I don't like for there to be only a single option to get them, period.

Tell me: when you obtained Harrow, what was it that felt tedious about getting him? Was it the quest, or the RNG drops tied to his Neuroptics and Systems? Because the latter I can agree is tedious, especially since Defection is notoriously unpleasant, but if it's the former, then asking to bypass that too comes across a less reasonable, particularly when the option to obtain the frame instantly is already available (i.e. by paying).

Quote

And it's not like what I'm asking for is entirely unprecedented. Void Relics are a pretty good example of a reward system done mostly right, in my opinion. No, not all of them drop from all things, but each mission type is capable of dropping quite a few different ones, and they vary with mission level. Let's say I want a particular Prime item. That item's pieces tend to drop from a variety of Relics, each of those relics can be earned from a variety of mission types and planets, and all relics can be opened pretty much anywhere across the solar system. There ARE limitations, but there's enough breadth in there to ensure that "it doesn't feel like it." Granted, that may be what you're proposing and I'm just not seeing it, but that's the sort of system I tend to prefer.

But then what differentiates the tedium of Prime farming from that of farming Harrow? Harrow at least has only one layer of serious RNG to his parts, which are on some specific drop tables. Meanwhile, primes require having the right relic drop at random, then running relics until the stuff you want drops from those.

Quote

After Cetus and Fortuna, this is such a nice breath of fresh air that I don't really mind so much how I have to grind Disruption for Hexenon and the Ropalolyst for Wisp. Yeah, that's true but there's so much else in the update that it's OK for the time being. I sincerely hope this is the blueprint moving forward.

Agreed. As much as I think there are things to like in Cetus and Fortuna, their insularity is not one of them. In fact, I'd rather DE put any further "one big map" levels on pause, and instead brought every single current tileset to the same level of quality as the new Gas City, which Railjack seems will do for spaceships. As you mentioned, whereas PoE and the Vallis are isolated to their own playpits, the new Gas City tileset feeds directly into the entire rest of the game's content, by dint of being one of the many tilesets used for Sorties, fissures, syndicate missions, invasions, nightmare missions, etc. as you also listed. Putting all of that level design work into updating old tilesets, or adding new ones to planets that are currently just clones of others (i.e. most higher-level planets, starting with Saturn) would therefore have much more lasting returns than if DE were to focus on yet another mini-world disconnected from the rest of the game.

Edited June 4, 2019 by Teridax68

[844448]

16 hours ago, ShortCat said:

• 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.

Once this gets implemented, see how many complaints you can get because people can't rush/endless mission afk farming

[k05h]

Am 3.6.2019 um 04:07 schrieb peterc3:

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

You are right. But you can write a paper on different strategies how to prevent resources inflation without hurting player experience. Game design is actually much more interesting then churning out a new resource every other update. 

[Steel_Rook]

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Tell me: when you obtained Harrow, what was it that felt tedious about getting him? Was it the quest, or the RNG drops tied to his Neuroptics and Systems? Because the latter I can agree is tedious, especially since Defection is notoriously unpleasant, but if it's the former, then asking to bypass that too comes across a less reasonable, particularly when the option to obtain the frame instantly is already available (i.e. by paying).

It's neither, actually. Let me explain. I dislike neither the Chains of Harrow quest nor the Defection game mode, so the act of earning Harrow itself isn't tedious to me. What broke my back, rather, was deliberately farming for him, which meant replaying the same game mode over and over again, and replaying it in the most optimal fashion possible. For various reasons, I tend to get bored of doing the same activity multiple times in a row, so running Defection after Defection really soured it for me. My solution, then, was to run a Defection mission to Rotation C every so often (usually once when I log in) to try my chances and then move onto other stuff. I got lucky in that I managed to score a Blueprint in I think 5 attempts after I'd decided I wanted Harrow, so that helped.

In other words, the issue for me was the bottleneck of having to play a single game mode which exists in three nodes in the entire game over and over again, or else just fail to make meaningful progress towards Harrow. Maybe getting all of the drops from all of the things is a bit over-ambitious, but I'd like to have a broader range of content I could cycle between when working on a particular reward. The reason I bring up Void Relics is that despite their grindy nature, at least I can alternate between tilesets, mission types and enemy levels while doing it. It's this bottleneck where rewards come from low-percentage drops off of a single node in the entire game. At least something like an Ivara piece drops from three or four Spy missions across multiple planets.

To put it another way: I didn't mind farming HARROW. I minded FARMING harrow. I realise this is getting into personal preference territory, though, so I'm willing to drop it.

 

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Whereas PoE and the Vallis are isolated to their own playpits, the new Gas City tileset feeds directly into the entire rest of the game's content, by dint of being one of the many tilesets used for Sorties, fissures, syndicate missions, invasions, nightmare missions, etc. as you also listed. Putting all of that level design work into updating old tilesets, or adding new ones to planets that are currently just clones of others (i.e. most higher-level planets, starting with Saturn) would therefore have much more lasting returns than if DE were to focus on yet another mini-world disconnected from the rest of the game.

Yup. In my opinion, tileset remasters and especially new tilesets have a LOT more return on investment as compared to Free Roam maps. They're randomly generated, they integrate with preexisting game modes and they add variety to the overall experience. I suspect Railjack might be an attempt to blend the two. Imagine, for instance, a large-scale space Free Roam map accessible with our Archwing, with large space ships scattered about that we can board and explore. Think Dead Space 3, for example. This retains the open nature of Free Roam maps as it allows the player to pick their path and explore locations in any order while still retaining the procedural generation of Tilesets by varying what ships spawn, where they spawn and what's inside of them. It can also work with most of the existing game modes, such as a Spy mission where players have to find ships containing Vaults and potentially board them silently, or a Sabotage mission where players must board a capital ship and either destroy its reactor or use its weapon systems to attack smaller ships (ala Assault). And then there's the basic stuff like Exterminate and Capture and Survival (having to jump to a different ship if one runs out of Life Support).

This is going off topic, but my point is that missions in reusable, randomly-generated tilesets which can be used with a lot of legacy game modes offers substantially more content for potentially less work than these giant beatufil and ostensibly empty maps with their own very limited mission set which don't get used anywhere outside the one hub attached to them. If I had a vote on the matter, I'd say precisely what you did. Give each planet its own unique tileset before making any more open worlds. A change of scenery matters a lot more than people give it credit for.

[Teridax68]

9 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

It's neither, actually. Let me explain. I dislike neither the Chains of Harrow quest nor the Defection game mode, so the act of earning Harrow itself isn't tedious to me. What broke my back, rather, was deliberately farming for him, which meant replaying the same game mode over and over again, and replaying it in the most optimal fashion possible. For various reasons, I tend to get bored of doing the same activity multiple times in a row, so running Defection after Defection really soured it for me. My solution, then, was to run a Defection mission to Rotation C every so often (usually once when I log in) to try my chances and then move onto other stuff. I got lucky in that I managed to score a Blueprint in I think 5 attempts after I'd decided I wanted Harrow, so that helped.

So the latter, then. From what you're telling me now, then, it's not about the quantity of time spent obtaining Harrow, so much as the quality, namely the sharp drop in enjoyment that comes from repetition. This I can agree with, hence me proposing to gate warframes behind quests (and quests only), and weapons behind varied Riven-style challenges. If even that much is too much railroading, though (which I do think also becomes more debatable from the perspective of a larger playerbase), one solution could simply be to "tag" whichever reward you want to play towards obtaining, and after collecting enough Affinity, or whichever equivalent, you'd get what you want. This would make balancing around Affinity much more brittle, however, because it would amplify the risk of any one efficient Affinity farming method dominating the whole game, and the same principle applies to any system that lets the player choose entirely how they want to progress (because they can just choose what's optimal, rather than what is most enjoyable, and we're back at square one).

 

[Steel_Rook]

4 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

So the latter, then. From what you're telling me now, then, it's not about the quantity of time spent obtaining Harrow, so much as the quality, namely the sharp drop in enjoyment that comes from repetition. This I can agree with, hence me proposing to gate warframes behind quests (and quests only), and weapons behind varied Riven-style challenges. If even that much is too much railroading, though (which I do think also becomes more debatable from the perspective of a larger playerbase), one solution could simply be to "tag" whichever reward you want to play towards obtaining, and after collecting enough Affinity, or whichever equivalent, you'd get what you want. This would make balancing around Affinity much more brittle, however, because it would amplify the risk of any one efficient Affinity farming method dominating the whole game, and the same principle applies to any system that lets the player choose entirely how they want to progress (because they can just choose what's optimal, rather than what is most enjoyable, and we're back at square one).

I neglected to mention, but "quests" would be fine for me, especially if you're referring to quests like the Limbo Theorem or the Silver Grove. Though those can (and probably should) be fairly simplistic, they still provide a bit of story and world-building, they can provide specific challenges and they offer a deterministic way to grab an entire Warframe. If you're referring to quests like the Glast Gambit or Chains of Harrow, however, I'm not sure those really count. Both quests drop only a Blueprint, but you still have to farm the parts normally. Those don't so much earn you a Warframe as they earn you the right to work for a Warframe.

Honestly, I'd like to see DE work on a bit more storyline content in general. For how simple the storytelling is in the Ropalolyst fight (it's just a talking head monologue), it's been very effective at moving the plot forward and even starting lore discussions with my friends. Quests which deliver a bit of narrative and a Warframe ought to be the norm, in my opinion.

 

As to weapons being gated behind achievements... I don't know. I haven't actually found weapons to be particularly problematic to attain and craft, with a few exceptions. Boss drop weapons are annoying because they require farming bosses, and a few have REALLY absurd resource requirements. It's not just the Hema, either. The Sibear and the Knux requiring tens of thousands of Cryotic is also pretty silly, in my opinion. All of this is to say that switching to ostensibly achievements might actually make those harder to get. Plus, the game has literal hundreds upon hundreds of weapons, so coming up with meaningful achievements for all of them might be tough, or rather end up with duplicate achievements.

I don't have a defined opinion on your proposal for guns, however, so the above is less intended to be critical and more introspective.

 

As to tying weapons to affinity... Hmm. I like the idea of tagging a weapon I don't have and then earning it through affinity, but I share your concern regarding what that does to affinity farms. There's a massive difference in affinity gain between ESO or high-rotation Survival vs running your average Exterminate or Capture Invasion. As much as I want it, that's probably going to break more things than it fixes. If I had to choose between Affinity and Achievements for weapons, I'd probably go with Achievements. But honestly, though - the Clan Dojo research approach seems to work pretty well.

[Teridax68]

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I neglected to mention, but "quests" would be fine for me, especially if you're referring to quests like the Limbo Theorem or the Silver Grove. Though those can (and probably should) be fairly simplistic, they still provide a bit of story and world-building, they can provide specific challenges and they offer a deterministic way to grab an entire Warframe. If you're referring to quests like the Glast Gambit or Chains of Harrow, however, I'm not sure those really count. Both quests drop only a Blueprint, but you still have to farm the parts normally. Those don't so much earn you a Warframe as they earn you the right to work for a Warframe.

Okay, but that's the point I'm making: at the end of a quest, the player should obtain the Warframe, with no further grinding required. There are plenty of other ways to encourage the player to play the rest of the game's content, and ending the quest with a grind list, rather than the warframe that kept getting talked about, I think always undercuts the entire prior experience, and adds an unnecessary delay in-between getting hyped up about the warframe, and actually getting to play them.

Quote

Honestly, I'd like to see DE work on a bit more storyline content in general. For how simple the storytelling is in the Ropalolyst fight (it's just a talking head monologue), it's been very effective at moving the plot forward and even starting lore discussions with my friends. Quests which deliver a bit of narrative and a Warframe ought to be the norm, in my opinion.

Agreed, and on that note I think many of our older events and operations should come back in quest form, not just because they contain a ton of lore necessary to understand the current context and characters in the game, but also because the game still has a relatively uneven questline that sometimes drops the player completely without giving them any indication of where to go next: with these events, the player could have a continuous questing experience that could carry them from one end of the system to the next. Some adjustment would need to be done with these events to turn them into quests, but they could still be a more economical way of adding content to the current game, as they wouldn't have to be made from nothing.

Quote

As to weapons being gated behind achievements... I don't know. I haven't actually found weapons to be particularly problematic to attain and craft, with a few exceptions. Boss drop weapons are annoying because they require farming bosses, and a few have REALLY absurd resource requirements. It's not just the Hema, either. The Sibear and the Knux requiring tens of thousands of Cryotic is also pretty silly, in my opinion. All of this is to say that switching to ostensibly achievements might actually make those harder to get.

I mean, that's kind of the point: for most weapons, the hardest part to them is just waiting 12 or 24 hours for the foundry timer to run, because their recipes only require resources most players will already have in spades. Despite the pretense, there is no gameplay to obtaining these weapons, only waiting time. Cutting out the forced waiting, but instead gating these weapons behind actual gameplay, would offer a more meaningful way of stretching out the player's playtime and spacing out weapon unlocks, one that would involve actual gameplay. 

Quote

But honestly, though - the Clan Dojo research approach seems to work pretty well.

Clan Dojo research is just foundry crafting with extra steps and more waiting times, though. The problems there are exactly the same as with the rest of crafting in Warframe, with additional issues tied to scaling costs with player numbers in an environment where not everyone will participate equally.

Edited June 4, 2019 by Teridax68

[Xzorn]

Short answer: Yes, under the current situation DE will forever have to introduce new resource types.

Long answer: It's an economics issue well as a target audience problem. In any game where items are not lost, broken or stolen said items will depreciate in value as supply overwhelms demand. This works for both traded and non traded commodities. Since we've lacked any long term circulating investment for excess resources we've stacked millions upon millions of those resources and they're now effectively worthless. (ie, even if something cost 1 million Alloy Plate I wouldn't flinch)

What comes into play next is the target audience. If we were to add a circulating economic system for resource; what would be the ratio and what would be the outcome? There's such a board difference in accumulated items at this point due to the lack of a proper economy there's not really any starting point for resources dumps.

Kuva and Ducats are two circulating commodities. Though fundamentally basic they work and will continue to work.

Should they consider things like this with new resources? Yes. Will they? Probably not but as for the old ones. I don't think much can be done.

[(XBOX)mxgreg]

On 2019-06-01 at 8:59 AM, 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.

Thanks for putting that idea out there. 🙂

[Steel_Rook]

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Okay, but that's the point I'm making: at the end of a quest, the player should obtain the Warframe, with no further grinding required. There are plenty of other ways to encourage the player to play the rest of the game's content, and ending the quest with a grind list, rather than the warframe that kept getting talked about, I think always undercuts the entire prior experience, and adds an unnecessary delay in-between getting hyped up about the warframe, and actually getting to play them.

Gotcha. In that case, we agree. Incidentally, a friend of mine also seems to agree by proxy. He grew progressively angrier at Warframe for running him through quests and difficult missions only to reward him with a grind. I believe his wording was to the effect of "Good job! No go make your own damn reward!" To sum up - yes, I'd definitely prefer earning entire Warframes through quests if that were possible.

 

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I mean, that's kind of the point: for most weapons, the hardest part to them is just waiting 12 or 24 hours for the foundry timer to run, because their recipes only require resources most players will already have in spades. Despite the pretense, there is no gameplay to obtaining these weapons, only waiting time. Cutting out the forced waiting, but instead gating these weapons behind actual gameplay, would offer a more meaningful way of stretching out the player's playtime and spacing out weapon unlocks, one that would involve actual gameplay. 

Yeah, I see your point. Sadly, I don't think my input on this particular point would be very valuable, simply because I'm utterly failing to be objective. I do appreciate what you're proposing and it has merit. However, it would also make weapons harder to get for me, and that's clouding my judgement. I'll drop a tentative agreement in spirit, but feel further input from me would just muddy the waters. Will have to think about it some more - apologies for the anti-climax.

[Els236]

Il y a 4 heures, Steel_Rook a dit :

Gotcha. In that case, we agree. Incidentally, a friend of mine also seems to agree by proxy. He grew progressively angrier at Warframe for running him through quests and difficult missions only to reward him with a grind. I believe his wording was to the effect of "Good job! No go make your own damn reward!" To sum up - yes, I'd definitely prefer earning entire Warframes through quests if that were possible.

 

Although this thread is slowly de-railing from resource grinding, to the larger, more volatile topic of grinding as a whole in Waframe, I do agree with what your friend said.

"Hey, spend an hour doing Index over and over and over in The Glast Gambit for your Nidus blueprint" - "yipee!" - "Right, now go pray to RNGeesus you get all Nidus parts in 3 C rots. of Infested Salvage" - "oh..." // 45 C rots. later // "f##clchjdf Goddamnit stupid game! I quit!"

Yeah. Real fun that.

Same goes for Ivara (400 spies later and only just got her) and Harrow really and some others too.

[Mrevasivepants]

I have to agree with my bestie here, and not just for the sake of agreeing.

Making new resources is a time waste for literally everyone: The Vet players who farm it; The New players who need to wiki the stuff and get even more confused with the already existing resources; and of course the devs that waste time coding something new, designing it and properly balance it.

New resources aren't inherently bad. Take Argon Crystals for example, farming them feels justifiable because you can get them at a decent rate, it (was) in a tileset where people wouldn't need to go out of their way to farm it because they'd go there to farm prime parts in the first place (back then at least) and there are a ton of stuff that require Argon Crystals, the only bad thing is the non-sensical removal after 24 hours of adquiring.

The newest set of resources that have been released for the past 1 year now are the ones that are trully nerve wrecking. You spend days, or weeks if you're more of a casual player to farm the stuff... and what? just for a weapon or 2? what are you going to do with it then? Nothing, because DE would rather go the lazy route of their hay days of new content (new mastery folder weapons every week/month) instead of having a way of recycling the stuff.

Now, I hear some of the people in this thread and their voices, saying: "Well without new resources there's no engagement, if you use old resources people are going to come in and leave in the same hour after getting the weapons." That's a reasonable train of thought, only that it isn't. Let's be honest, how long do you take to farm the new stuff? 1 day? 2 days? 3 tops? Is adding a new soon to be obsolete material, that increases playtime of the average player for 3 days in exchange for just another intricate and pointless way of getting the new stuff in addition of it potentially cause people to be upset and damage your reputation? You be the judge, but in my point of view it's not worth it by a mile away.

DE is already taking its time releasing content by perfecting it, why not waste a bit more of time and make the new content a bit more interesting in order for people to really stick to it for a bit more? I already suggested for them to patch out all the weaponry one at the time that are essentially just mastery folder, and thus mitigating the elitist ideia of the game and pretty much making the "Meta" more diverse and interesting.

Exploiter orb was fun, even after finishing it I sometimes go back there because its a boss that really touches me and I find it very fun to fight.

TLDR: If you wanna make a new resource, go for it, but make sure it doesn't just apply to a couple of new things and then be forever useless once its adquired, either release stuff like this once a year or find a way for players to be able to recycle it for other materials or even prizes.