Arbitrations feedback

[Damocles]

Arbitrations needs to have a few things changed before it should be released

1. it has to be server hosted: your invulnerability phase during a disorienting host migration will never be enough to compensate for the death of some new player who bit off more than they can chew
2. Death should NOT be revived. Dont encourage new casual players to an pseudo end game mode. Also tying in with the arbitration revive system, its biased towards burdening other warframes health, so you're basically encouraged to use quick thinking frames just because very little thought was placed on the revive system. Remove it entirely.
3. Cant see the Vitus Essence drops, you made the resource green line WAY too small to see and mark. They should be like sentient cores
4. Remove the Seeding step from drops and move it to the arbitration store. You CAN'T benefit from multiple copies, so why force it to be a random option that dilutes your efforts? At least multiple copies of mods and arcanes can be traded and sold, ephemeras cannot. It wouldn't be a problem if it was dropped by Arbitration drones, but the fact it replaces your "would-be" reward with a "nothing", it clearly needs to be changed

The rewards:

• New Aura Mods:
  • Aerodynamic: 6 seconds added to Aim Glide/Wall Latch time, decreases damage taken while Airborne by 24%*
  • Swift Momentum: 30% faster Charge Attack speed, 6 seconds added to  Melee Combo time*
  • Shepherd: Increases Companion Armor by 180 and Companion Health by 300*
  • Combat Discipline: Allies gain 20 Health when they make a kill, but the aura bearer loses 10 Health when the bearer makes a kill.*
  • Melee Guidance: Reduces Melee Combo timer on Self by 6 seconds, increases Melee Combo timer for Allies by 12 seconds*
• New Arcanes:
  • Arcane Primary Charger: On Melee Kill: 20% chance that Primary Weapon damage is increased by 200% for 8 seconds*
  • Arcane Blade Charger:  On Primary Weapon Kill: 20% chance that Melee damage is increased by 200% for 8 seconds*
  • Arcane Pistoleer: On Pistol Headshot Kill: 30% chance to gain 100% ammo efficiency for 4 seconds*
  • Arcane Bodyguard: On Six Melee Kills Within 30 seconds: Heal companion by 600*
  • Arcane Tanker: On Heavy Weapon Summon: Gain 1200 armor for 16 seconds*

Lets Dissect them all

• Aerodynamics Is a good mod for wall latch, but the 6 seconds of aim glide benefits almost nothing because gravity exists. You will land long before your aim glide allowance expires. Aero Vantage fixes this, but it becomes a 2 mod investment. Now I can say that the mod penalty is an actual issue because you must recall these are pseudo end game rewards. In an end game player context, mod use is really important and you should never be using 2 mods just to make something work. This mod needs a little bit of gravity reduction to make it worth while
• Swift Momentum is EXCELLENT. It is the only mod that provides something of value, and that's combo duration. The charge attack speed (after rigorous testing) is marginal. You really don't notice it at all until you find a party of 3 using this aura. This doesnt matter at all because you're getting a solid benefit from the combo duration. If DE wants the make it a charged attack thing, then they really need to look into charged attack speed bonuses and why it feels like it's not even there.
• Shepherd... Not the best mod, 180 armor and 300 health is really good for star chart content, just not high leveled sorties, kuva flood, ESO, and the arbitration missions you get them from. This is literally a new player mod that veterans are farming for the new player base. This is really shady to me but this is my opinion. I dislike the thought veterans are playing the game for rewards they cant even benefit from but the new players can. Shady!
• Combat Discipline is completely bugged. I can see how this would work in theory, but as of now, its a reversed version of "final countdown" from yu gi oh. After X kills, you die. No Quick Thinking Affects, no Wukong passives, no nothing. Also your allied kills dont heal you back. It has no place in solo mission, making it inconsistent with other mods that solely benefit from all the other legacy auras. This mod needs to be COMPLETELY REWORKED
• Melee Guidance. Similarly with Combat Discipline, is has no use case in solo missions, making it require a rework as well. The problem with this mod is that nobody in their right mind would use this when Swift Momentum exists. That's the explanation; all of it; it literally is a strictly worse Swift Momentum. Before you say a full squad effect, then imagine giving 3 other UNIVERSALLY useful auras like corrosive projection and 1 swift momentum and tell me which proposition is more beneficial to the group. 90% armor reduction and +6 combo, or everyone gets 30 seconds of combo which is way more than what you need (just use Naramon at this point because combo benefits melee, armor reduction benefits everyone using anything).
• Arcane Primary/Blade Charger: Not really worth the slot considering other arcanes can often outshine it (like energize and grace to keep you alive and keep your buffs spammed). It does have a really neat case that it synergizes with the melee quick switch and further benefits from gun blades. However, 200% damage is regrettably nothing. At endgame, we realize dilution and Chroma exists. Because the damage increase is proportional to the ratio they add, you're more likely getting close to double damage when conditions are met, maybe +50% for end game players who already has damage as a fully saturated stat. Take the opticor, add serration, add heavy caliber (maybe riven for accuracy sensative guns) and you probably have 400% total damage, Add another 200%, that's a 50% increase (or less with all 3 mods). This is equivalent to bringing an unmodded rhino with you and have rhino use roar. The opportunity cost of 1 arcane slot, the conditions that needs to be met, and the non-scaling affect makes it best used for newer players, not the players who actually acquire the mod. The conditions and affect of this arcane needs to be tweaked. I would recommend it being bonus damage so it scales regardless of who you are and progression in the game.
• Arcane Pistoleer: it's trash. Waste of a slot, and I'm not biased when I say it has only 1 use case. You're going to have to carry a rapid fire secondary weapon with LOTS of ammo, have incredible luck and aim to procc this arcane, but when it does procc, you're going to town. It's a niche case that will highly benefit the Pyrana prime, and not really anything else. The game does not spawn enough enemies to keep 4 seconds alive, adding on a 30% chance to gate the effect, this mod isn't really worth it. Choosing this mod is like choosing green in roulette. You win big if you do, but you're missing out on the more stable benefits of other arcanes. In an amortized case, you wouldn't use this unless it's the Pyrana prime and you're feeling lucky as it one of the highest damage output secondaries that has a weakness of magazine size. Overall, it's too niche to be an arcane, and should probably be made into a mod instead.
• Arcane Bodyguard: Strictly worse pack leader, except you moved it to an arcane slot instead of a mod slot. You have 10 slots on your companion, while you only have 2 arcane slots. Enough said, this arcane is the WORST arcane of all the arcanes in the list.
• Arcane Tanker: This arcane has 1 use case. Get armor for 4/8/12/16 seconds on summoning heavy weapon. Too bad it takes 4 seconds to complete the animation, the arcane's only useful at higher ranks and (because you cannot move during the summon animation as well as it may not be ready to deploy thus not likely to be a repeatable action) you're rarely going to benefit from this armor outside of Profit Taker. Even in profit taker, you're best option is to bring Chroma anyways, and armor isn't a high priority since you wont be summoning it every 16 seconds. Even in a mode where you're mostly switching in and out of heavy weapons, the duration is vastly insufficient for the trigger condition. Keep in mind, you lose the first 4 seconds too! The real use case and why this trashy arcane suddenly becomes THE BEST ARCANE for once again a REALLY NICHE CASE, is because Rhino can snap shot the armor gains, and keep it for the rest of the mission. When the armor needs to be refreshed, you arch gun can be summoned on command.

Other bugs/inconsistencies with arbitration:

• Sometimes the rewards are not shown in your Mission Progress menu
• Cannot complete (or fail) an arbitration mission and go back in. Despite it not being kuva flood and you can be taxied back in, you cannot instigate the mission yourself unless you Alt F4 your game to leave the mission.
• The arbitration drones are still not color blind friendly. Also don't highlight enemies the same color as the drone because it makes everything red and hard to find the actual drone
• I avoid arbitration for corrupted missions because there is a weird interaction between the drone, a healer and a nullifier comboing up into an unstoppable trio. The drone is hidden behind the bubble and enemies, the healer prevents damage to the nullifier, the drone prevents damage to the healer, and the drone is protected because the nullifier and healer attracts enemies into 1 big wall of indestructible flesh.
• Arbitration drones cannot be targeted by abilities because, reasons... It's basically a strictly better ancient healer and nullifier which ironically transcends when all 3 are present rather than overlapping their abilities. The arb drone possesses NO weakness. Damage is nullified, not absorbed like the healer with a limited health pool and thus limited damage mitigation. The nullification cannot be stopped by good aim or rapid fire weapons like a nullifier bubble making it pretty much an absolute nullifier. A weakness to the arbitration drones needs to exist. Personally I dont think that should exist. We already have armor scaling, nullifiers and ancient healers, while corrupted has all 3. We need something new, like changing daily sortie conditions per reward rotation would be fun and challenging rather than strictly annoying shoot the balloon.
• Excavators needs a health boost. Excavation is right now is the only mission where someone needs to bring an area denial warframe or else everyone leaves the mission. There is no diversity, you cannot start the mission unless someone is forced to be a Frost or Khora. Limbo is okay if you have 2 of them. Then we look at Fortuna and their excavators have 60,000 health for level 50 missions, and we get 2500 health for level 80-100 missions. NICE!
• Excavators have a 100% power level that means nothing because 100% of 100% is not actually 100% of it being fully charged. Does that make sense? Of course not, that's because you cannot redefine 100% to not be 100%.
• Enemy spawns are SUPER DUPER LOW. They all spawn near 1 person, and there's probably 20 enemies at any given time; that's about enemies 5 per player. The enemy numbers dont scale at all. It would probably be better to spawn more enemies than to spawn arbitration drones. But dont let assets go to waste! Make the arbitration drones a rare enemy that we're excited to see for rare drops!
• Disruption demolysts are minibosses that sometimes have various immunities and damage reductions. Add an arbitration drone in there and I don't want to deal with it. There's a certain level of acceptance where you make a villain powerful, then there's a making a villain annoying to deal with. I opt for not dealing with it at all since DE keeps adding new conditions to winning, and they're stacking. It's confusing, and obfuscates the player's goal of shooting things to have fun. Shoot the drone, CC the enemies, shoot the other drone, find the other drone, kill that drone, CC again, shoot the demolyst, follow it because it's a speeding bullet sponge, dont die because the demolyst is distracting you from the other enemies that came out of CC, stay alive, repeat some combination of... The other missions offer the same rewards and are much easier (less annoying) to do.

The good changes: glad you read to the end, because the good needs to be noted as well so DE actually knows what is appreciated

• Vitus essence is no longer a dead currency thanks to the kuva rewards you can redeem from them
• Endo is pretty cool because you can sell it as a maxed mod for 150 plat+
• Duration of the missions being lowered is pretty sweet. We get pretty bored out of our minds
• Reward rotation changes dont really matter, but it was kept consistent to what is expected

Comment anything I've missed or point out anything I'm wrong about. 

Edited September 22, 2019 by Descent-of-Damocles

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

29 minutes ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

Arcane Tanker: This arcane has 1 use case. Get armor for 4/8/12/16 seconds on summoning heavy weapon. Too bad it takes 4 seconds to complete the animation, the arcane's only useful at higher ranks and (because you cannot move during the summon animation as well as it may not be ready to deploy thus not likely to be a repeatable action) you're rarely going to benefit from this armor outside of Profit Taker. Even in profit taker, you're best option is to bring Chroma anyways, and armor isn't a high priority since you wont be summoning it every 16 seconds. Even in a mode where you're mostly switching in and out of heavy weapons, the duration is vastly insufficient for the trigger condition. Keep in mind, you lose the first 4 seconds too! The real use case and why this trashy arcane suddenly becomes THE BEST ARCANE for once again a REALLY NICHE CASE, is because Rhino can snap shot the armor gains, and keep it for the rest of the mission. When the armor needs to be refreshed, you arch gun can be summoned on command.

Use Vazarin protective dash in your own warframe before deploying the archgun and you'll see the "true" potential of this arcane : invulnerability while deploying the archgun, then significant eHP increase.
I agree that it's niche for profit taker.

Edited September 22, 2019 by MonsterOfMyOwn

[Gurpgork]

1 hour ago, Descent-of-Damocles said:

Remove the Seeding step from drops and move it to the arbitration store.

Hot take but everything they added to the tables this patch should have gone to the store. Rotations should give you Endo, Ayatan, and Vitus, while the store gives you the mods, arcanes, and cosmetics. I don't understand why they added a token system, but then only let you get a handful of things with the tokens. 

[Damocles]

1 hour ago, Gurpgork said:

Hot take but everything they added to the tables this patch should have gone to the store. Rotations should give you Endo, Ayatan, and Vitus, while the store gives you the mods, arcanes, and cosmetics. I don't understand why they added a token system, but then only let you get a handful of things with the tokens. 

I suppose that's true but the reason RNG based grind is so prevalent is the very same reason why the UK is banning loot boxes and addictive technologies. It's a careful formula of making the grind harder so you play more and spend more. DE does this so you play the game more, while other games do it so you pay them real money. In that relation, DE is fair. Because I can trade the arcanes I dont want for those I do want, I think it's actually well done. Just yesterday I traded 6 Tankers for 6 Primary Chargers. They're trash arcanes, but novelty nonetheless. Plus the RNG aspect can jack the prices up

[HeartPurity]

"Death should NOT be revived. Dont encourage new casual players to an pseudo end game mode. Also tying in with the arbitration revive system, its biased towards burdening other warframes health, so you're basically encouraged to use quick thinking frames just because very little thought was placed on the revive system. Remove it entirely."

Totally agree, or if we cant remove this annoying revive system, at least let us decide when is the right timing to pick them up, instead of stepping on them accidentally when surrounded by enemies. e.g. press "F" to pick up the shiny bits.