Nightwave Creds as decaying act-tied uncommon drops

[SnuggleBuckets]

I recently in another topic made an off-hand suggestion on how to improve on Nightwave.
Now, if someone doesn't think it needs improving, let me quote the entire context:

On 2019-07-26 at 7:34 AM, SnuggleBuckets said:

Yeah, Nightwave and the rotating expensive Mod offering system is new player hostile.
And think about it:
You're a new player, see that this week the offering store finally has a mod you've been needing, but you don't have the creds, so you look at when the next cred reward rank up is, and see that it doesn't align with this week when the mod is available, or there's an elite one like "kill Eidolon/Profit Taker/Ropalolyst" that you're just not going to be able to even piggyback off of.
The people who need creds the most for all of the essential offerings, new players, or casuals, need to put in even MORE effort in completing as many acts per week as possible, to go above and beyond the 30 rank where they "prestige" and can gain a trickle of creds on every further rank up with that system, only then can they earn for a short time until the season ends a bit more creds that will expire and become useless for the next season.
Veterans don't have much reason to prestige, once they reach rank 30, they got all the unique new stuff, they've farmed or done the alerts years ago for everything in the cred offering store. Meaning Veterans don't have to do so much, Elite weeklies are just a quicker way for them to reach 30, while new players almost have to do those if they want more measly creds for even one more cred offering (that they can't predict as it changes every week) before their time runs out for that season.

That system is so contradictory in its incentive structure and intention.
Been saying it ad nauseam since the early days of Nightwave, it needs a serious rework, it came out half-baked, needed months more in the oven, but they've only microwaved it for a few minutes after release.

I think most "casuals" and new players would be completely fine with the idea that the higher rank rewards aren't really meant for them, all of your pretty cosmetics, armors, Umbra Formas, they could see why that is sort of locked away from them behind grinding the standing, the problem is the creds, that they more desperately need than veterans, are also tied to getting past rank 30.
So I made another comment with a suggestion:

20 hours ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

If Nora's radio was its own thing, if weekly acts were just for standing to the 30 rank rewards, and if creds were a decaying resource you got from grinding say act related activities (get more creds for doing things tied that week to higher tier missions), but not tied concretely in a fixed amount to them, then I think the system would be more fair to everyone.

That one though, got me thinking, it could actually work brilliantly in my mind.
Let's forget Nora for the moment, let's just focus on how creds are only available as rank rewards, now we already have decaying resources (argon), and we have activity time-limited resources with Cryptographic ALU & Omega Isotopes, so it shouldn't be too hard for the devs to code up that every week, creds for the cred offering store, are drops from weekly & Elite weekly act related activities.
Say one week the weekly act is to do X nightmare missions, you do those X amounts, and you get your standard flat standing reward for it, but as long as you keep doing nightmare missions that same week, enemies in those missions would have a chance of dropping creds for you to use.
Say 5 creds for regular weekly, 10-15 as drops from elite weekly related activities, being uncommon drops.

I think the devs would also like this as it would continue to foster players trying out each week these different activities, going from one week doing nightmares, to another week doing vaults, to another week doing bounties.
That's what the devs want, for players to engage with these activities, and this would encourage everyone who still need creds for the cred offering store, to not just drop those activities once they're done with the act and move on to the next act.

Acts themselves could still be challenging, at least the Elites, for the vets powering through for the standing ranks, but everyone else isn't penalised for not being able to do those when they need their creds for all of the resources and mods in the offering store.

[ManFromMars]

Interesting suggestion. I think this, or something like it would probably help a lot. I agree that currently nightwave credits are probably too hard to obtain for newer players compared to the unique rewards witch are either about right or a little too easy depending on who you ask. 

It would probably be a good idea though to cap how many credits you could get from repeating a single task though, to prevent just spamming whichever one can be done the fastest ad-nauseum. or there may be a better way to decouple the rank rewards from credit earning, but this is definitely a good jumping off point for further brainstorming.

[peterc3]

There's no point if you can grind for Creds. If you could grind for Creds, the cost for everything would go way up. You don't get more Creds and the same costs, it just won't happen. The prices, the rewards for the Acts, everything is based on how fast they want you to get X reward.

[SnuggleBuckets]

11 minutes ago, ManFromMars said:

It would probably be a good idea though to cap how many credits you could get from repeating a single task though

8 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

If you could grind for Creds, the cost for everything would go way up.

That's why I suggested decaying creds, and players will have to switch it up each week on what they're doing, I don't think it's necessary to cap them, and the costs are already balanced with the selection of items, that rotate each week, just stop thinking like a vet for a moment and think like someone who doesn't have all of the auras, cosmetics, and still need nitain, and always need more potatoes for their frames, weapons and syndicate sacrifices.

[peterc3]

2 minutes ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

That's why I suggested decaying creds, and players will have to switch it up each week on what they're doing, I don't think it's necessary to cap them, and the costs are already balanced with the selection of items, that rotate each week, just stop thinking like a vet for a moment and think like someone who doesn't have all of the auras, cosmetics, and still need nitain, and always need more potatoes for their frames, weapons and syndicate sacrifices.

Decaying doesn't matter. It increases the rate at which you can buy things from the Cred market. The costs are not balanced for allowing people to grind beyond what you get from the system itself.

There's tons of stuff I would want from Nightwave. I don't want to see it be balanced around mindless grinding every week because people wanted things faster. Potatoes are supposed to be hard to get outside of the Market, that is a bad argument.

[SnuggleBuckets]

1 minute ago, peterc3 said:

Potatoes are supposed to be hard to get outside of the Market, that is a bad argument

Potato alerts happened pretty frequently, often a level 15 sabotage on mars for instance, how's that hard? That's a bad argument.
The "mindless grinding" would be every week something different, vaults, caches, nightmares, bounties, captures, exterminates -- And you would have options each week to do more than one thing, and the elite would offer more creds as a drop.
 

6 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

The costs are not balanced for allowing people to grind beyond what you get from the system itself.

So do you think the prestige system wasn't balanced and we should get rid of that as you can grind beyond the fixed creds? Well, only the people who already have access to everything in the game and probably have already everything from the offering store from the old days in alerts could prestige and get more creds, which again, speaks to the inverted incentive structure.

 

[SnuggleBuckets]

6 minutes ago, (XB1)PerverseWolf said:

Rather than grind for them add them as a secondary drop for ranking up in nightwave, the amount would be set to a reasonable amount and allow certain offerings to be rewarded upon completion of a weekly bounty

Do you mean X amount of creds for each rank up alongside the "actual" rank up reward? Or a fixed amount of creds for completing a weekly alongside the standing reward?

[peterc3]

24 minutes ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

So do you think the prestige system wasn't balanced and we should get rid of that as you can grind beyond the fixed creds? Well, only the people who already have access to everything in the game and probably have already everything from the offering store from the old days in alerts could prestige and get more creds, which again, speaks to the inverted incentive structure.

 

The Prestige happens when you have already done all the ranks, not before. You still have to gain ranks by doing Acts.

[Velothed]

If this where implemented I can allready seeing players grinding for creds nonstop and stockpiling reactors, catalysts and Nitain.